People were interested in what it looked like so this is from my phone.
This is why governments should use public infrastructure for public services.
I wish the federal government had a software team that made open source software that could be used by all the states.
Imagine if there was a free and open source self hosted alternative to twitter that federated with other social networks...
Germany is/was trying something kind of like this? I don't know much about it but here's a link in case you want to try reading into it a bit more.
I think something like code sharing just became a thing in government so I guess it's closer
USDS
Can you imagine a mastodon.whitehouse.gov instance and everyone in the world just defederates with it every time a republican gets inaugerated?
Using an url shortener smells like phishing
Yeh, I can't believe an emergency service (which I would consider a government agency) is using a URL shortener.
No wonder scammers also use URL shorteners. People get desensitized to what they are doing, masking the actual URL
I would think they could have a legit .gov url shortener. They're not much code and easy enough to run at scale.
I'd vote for u.gov.
they gotta recoup them tax dollars
They really don't. Just don't spend them on cocaine.
unless they are sharing.... I guess.
The dumb thing is they can fit quite a bit of text in the alert itself. They don't need to link to anything to provide the relevant info necessary to spot potential suspects or the description of the child.
Absolutely.
And no one is gonna bother clicking on that link so they pretty much made it useless
Every time I've gotten an Amber Alert on my phone, the phone screams the description of the kid & the suspected car & possibly the suspect themselves on top of showing the entire message on the screen. No idea why anywhere would put all of that info onto Twitter only when this system already exists & really grabs your attention.
...and then it wants you to make an account, right? :)
yep! dumb.
Yah, I've been yelling loudly about this shit for a decade. Nobody cares, especially not the people in the government who can't be bothered to use their own websites.
Just a taste of the deepening US oligarchy, as more public services are gutted in the favour of corpo interests.
If this isn't the correct community please let me know. I'm not sure where to post to be honest but it is a picture I suppose.
That's just an amber alert with extra steps
These marketing strategies to get people back on Twitter are getting out of hand!
Missouri does the same. I haven’t been able to see Emergency Alerts since quitting Twitter
This kind of crap, and the fact that I can't force the sounds to respect DND in my country, are why I turned off Amber Alerts on my phone through adb (or "hacking", to the layperson).
You need to use adb for that? I simply have a setting to disable them.
I have that setting, but it doesn't work in my country.
For some stupid reason, they've decided to send every time of warning message at the "Presidential Level" that's supposed to be reserved for crazy life or death kind of stuff.
The settings are in my phone, but can't actually do anything to the messages coming in.
So I disabled the entire system from my phone and downloaded an app that gives me alerts. Now I'm getting weather alerts again. Haven't had the opportunity to test whether it'll alert me to emergencies yet, thankfully. But I've turned off Amber Alerts in the app.
Ah fuck, that's annoying. I'm not even sure Amber alerts are a thing in Malaysia, I got one during a business trip to New York years ago that scared the hell out of me since my phone is set to perpetual silent mode with no vibrations, and at like 3 AM it started playing sirens on max volume.
Had it turned off ever since, and only severe threats and storm warnings activated, see those work fine.
I turned off alerts for this reason. It's always a twit or FB link. I don't have either so I can't see the info.
Jeez! I had one in MI a few months ago where the image of the abductee was a Bookface link you couldn't view unless you were signed in. Just ridiculous.
Now I understand. I was confused about why people were going to Xhitter for Amber alerts. Looks like California is the issue for pointing people there in the Amber alert that goes out to phones.
Nixel's system is great for SF and up North. I assumed the whole state used it
What is this ?
in the US you get automated messages that blow up your phone when a child is involved in a crime near you.
I turn mine off.
when a child is involved in a crime near you.
The specifics vary a bit from one state to another but AMBER Alerts are normally reserved for abducted children, usually with some additional requirements like sufficient reason to think the child is in immediate danger of death or injury, and enough of a description of the child and/or the abductor to be able to identify them.
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